Beyond the Impossible The Futures of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy Brighter Green is a New York–based public policy action tank that aims to raise awareness and encourage dialogue on and attention to issues that span the environment, animals, and sustainable development both globally and locally. Brighter Green’s work has a particular focus on equity and rights. On its own and in partnership with other organizations and individuals, Brighter Green generates and incubates research and project initiatives that are both visionary and practical. It produces publications, websites, documentary films, and implements programs to illuminate public debate among policy-makers, activists, communities, influential leaders, and the media, with the goal of social transformation at local and international levels. Brighter Green works in the United States and internationally, with a focus on the countries of the global South. This paper is part of the Vegan America Project (VAP), a conceptual space that employs veganism as a heuristic to examine the social, economic, psychological, and cultural changes that will both occur and be necessary as the United States and the world confront climate change. VAP is an independent project of Brighter Green. VAP is funded by VegFund (https://vegfund.org). For more information, visit veganamericaproject.com. Brighter Green welcomes feedback on this publication and other aspects of its work. This publication may be disseminated, copied, or translated freely with the express permission of Brighter Green. Email: [email protected] Report Credits Writer and researcher: Martin Rowe Design and layout: Emily Lavieri-Scull Thanks for editorial input to: Mia Macdonald, executive director of Brighter Green; Suzanne Lipton; and Ken Swensen; along with the assistance of Kyrillos Rizk Thanks also for their contribution to: Friends of the Earth, Good Food Institute, GRAIN, Kadim et al., Ocean Hugger Foods, New Harvest, Wild Earth, and the World Resources Institute. Much appreciation to VegFund for its ongoing support of the Vegan America Project. Photo and Illustration Credits Blue Nala: 12:1 (used with permission. For more, visit: https://oceanhuggerfoods.com/ahimi) Emily Lavieri-Scull:* Pages 1, 2:1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10:1, 10:2, 11, 16, 17, 19, 28 (bottom), 31, 34, 35, 37, 39, 55 (© Emily Lavieri-Scull 2018) Friends of the Earth: 29 (cover of report) Good Food Institute: 6 (© GFI 2017), 18 (© GFI 2018), 21 (© GFI 2017) (used with permission) GRAIN and IATP: 26 (to access images, paper, visit: https://www.iatp.org/emissions-impossible) Kadim: 22 (Kadim, Isam T., et al. “Cultured Meat from Muscle Stem Cells: A Review of Challenges and Prospects.” Journal of Integrative Agriculture [2015] 14[2]: 222–233.) © 2015, CAAS. All rights reserved. Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi: 10.1016/S2095-3119(14)60881-9 Martin Rowe: 2:2, 12:2, 14, 20 Nic D on Unsplash: 15 (https://unsplash.com/@trancisky) Wild Earth: 28 (top) (used with permission. For more, visit: https://wildearth.com/) World Resources Institute: 32 (from Ranganathan, Janet. et al. Shifting Diets for a Sustainable Food Future: Creating a Sustainable Food Future, Installment Eleven: https://www.wri.org/publication/shifting-diets) (Creative Commons) * For a description of all the vegan food in the photos by Emily Lavieri-Scull, see the “Food Details and Locations” section on p. 55. Copyright © Brighter Green 2019 Brighter Green, 165 Court Street, #171, Brooklyn, NY 11201. 212-414-2275 x 15 Printed on 30% recycled paper www.brightergreen.org eyond the Impos- sible explores the currentB landscape in the U.S. of plant-based meat and dairy prod- ucts and cellular agri- culture. (See “Terms of Reference” on p. 18) for a discussion of the term cellular agriculture.) It examines the opportunities opened up by, and the challenges that face, their widespread manufacture and adop- tion, and places both within the contexts of a longstanding discussion of a “natural” diet in the West, the stark questions posed by an increasingly globalized industrial animal agriculture system, and the looming catastrophes of climate change and biodi- versity loss. The paper is designed for those interested in knowing more about the science and rapidly evolving technological, business, and social-change dimensions of plant-based and cellular meat and dairy products. It also offers a larger philosophical and imaginative framework within which to consider how we balance the sometimes competing values that animate advocates for a healthy diet Precisely because much of the research and technology and sustainable food systems, food technologists, and those and many of the companies in these industries are rela- committed to veganism and animal rights. tively new, and because a substantial body of third-party Beyond the Impossible owes much of its information and research and long-view sociological analysis is not yet avail- many of its voices to New Harvest and the Good Food Insti- able, skepticism regarding outcomes and possible devel- tute, two non-profit organizations at the forefront of providing opments is warranted. This approach is reflected in this research in, information on, paper. That said, for those of and discussion about plant- us (the author of this paper The paper is designed for those interested in based and cellular meat and included) who despair at the knowing more about the science and rapidly dairy. Speakers and presenters trajectories for meat and dairy evolving technological, business, and social- at New Harvest’s 2017 and consumption globally in the change dimensions of plant-based and cellular 2018 and Good Food Institute’s context of biodiversity loss,2 meat and dairy products. 2018 conferences, as well as the runaway climate change, and organizations’ websites, videos, the huge numbers of animals and documents proved invaluable in presenting a snapshot who suffer now and are killed for meat and dairy products of these industries at a nascent stage of development. Also at the moment (and will in the future), genuine opportuni- helpful were several other events—including the Ivy League ties to lessen the most damaging consequences of industrial Future of Food Conference, Food Loves Tech, and Food Tank’s animal agriculture presented by plant-based and cellular Food Waste Conference (all in 2018)—and the Cultured Meat agriculture technologies offer some hope to change these and Future Food Podcast hosted by Alex Shirazi, which began trajectories and remediate the worst. This attitude is also in 2018.1 reflected in this paper. 1 ents a vision of the future that, this author believes, offers a way through the conceptual, socio-political, and perhaps even technological complexities that await both sectors. The paper concludes with recommendations for how people in all these spaces might open up discussion, bring more stakeholders on board, and hold the competing values together, so we might chart a way forward, with maximal impact and minimal delay, toward a genuine and lasting climate resilience. context lant-based versions of animal-food products have Pexisted for centuries. Tofu (bean curd) has origins dating to at least a thousand years ago in China and seven centuries4 back in Japan. Its fermented form, tempeh, may have been present in Indonesia as early as the sixteenth century.5 Wheat gluten may have been eaten in East Asia as early as the sixth century,6 even though the term for its popular flavored itera- tion, seitan, was coined only in 1961. John Harvey Kellogg7 made wheat gluten and various nut-based meat analogues at his sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the early 1900s.8 As an undertaking of the Vegan America Project,3 Beyond Non-dairy milks have also existed for centuries. Almond milk the Impossible also asks whether cellular and plant-based meat was drunk in the Middle East and Europe in the 1300s, and and dairy products may be useful tools to help us transition soymilk was consumed in China in the 1500s.9 Kellogg also from an agriculture centered on monocultures of feed crops developed his own soymilk. and industrial animal farming toward a more diverse, plant- Other meat analogues, such as vegetarian burgers of based agriculture, where many fewer farmed animals supply textured vegetable protein (TVP, invented by ADM),10 soy, the cells and proteins that allow cellular agriculture to thrive, or other beans (such as in Sosmix)11 have been available12 in without having to be killed. In producing Beyond the Impos- the West since the late 1960s. Plamil Foods in the U.K. was sible within the context of the Vegan America Project, this founded in 1965 to sell soymilk, and branched out in the writer is aware that some readers will expect more emphati- 1970s to sell other vegan foodstuffs.13 Seth Tibbott started the cally drawn ideological lines, while others will be leery of any soy and seitan meat company Tofurky in 1980,14 and non- judgments expressed lest they emerge from an ideological meat patties from Gardenburger (owned by Kellogg’s) and commitment they do not share. This balance, readers will Boca Burger (now a division of Kraft foods) followed in 1981 find in this paper, is deliberate: not as a result of a lack of conviction, but because, as you will read, the complexities and nuances of the arguments require a more supple and imagi- native response if we are to meet the considerable challenges facing the future of food security and that of our planet. The paper begins with an outline of the historical and conceptual background to both plant-based and cellular meat and dairy products. It then lays out the specific challenges (technological, knowledge-based, regulatory, and consumer- based) confronting the development of plant-based meat and dairy products and cellular agriculture. The paper then outlines concerns expressed by those advocating for broad adoption of a whole-foods, plant-based diet, as well as criticisms from social and environmental researchers and activists, and pres- 2 and 1982 respectively.